“Hello; come in.” He smiled heartily and shook their hands with enthusiasm. Vicky was just finishing up in the kitchen and wiped her hands on a towel before she welcomed them.
“Please, sit down,” she said, motioning toward the living room.
“Actually,” Sam said, “if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to see what the water company did with the well first. Did they get it all filled in?”
“Completely,” Price said. He led the way out the back door, and Vicky and the girls followed Sam and Lacey. “It took most of the day. I don’t know how many dump trucks of rock and gravel they ended up using. It was quite an undertaking.”
Out past the patio, the beautiful green lawn was scarred by the tracks of many heavy trucks. The wide ruts crisscrossed the grass.
“Your lawn,” Lacey groaned.
“It’s okay,” Price said. “Grass is easy to replace. It’ll be worth the trouble if this solves the problem.”
Price, Sam and Lacey followed the tracks toward the back of the property while Vicky and the girls waited on the patio. As they neared the site of the well, Lacey could see a large metal plate covering an area about ten feet square. The slanting light of the setting sun made it gleam.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s a serious cover. No one’s getting through that.”
“Exactly,” Price said. “It extends past the edges of the well, past the ground that was eroding away. And with the hole filled with sand and gravel, there should be no more erosion.”
Sam carefully walked the ground just outside the cover. He placed his feet mindfully, testing the ground, and stopped occasionally to receive any impressions from the ether. He walked the full square, all four sides, and came back to where Lacey and Price waited.
“This is good,” he pronounced. “She’s—well, I won’t say she’s happy, but she’s no longer concerned. She knows the girls are safe now. You’ll have no more trouble out here.”
Price exhaled with relief. “Thank God. I really felt very confident in the work that was done, but having her… approval, well, that means everything. I—I do appreciate that she was trying to keep my daughters safe; I just wish she could have found a less traumatic way to do it.”
“Spirits don’t always have a lot of choices in how they communicate,” Sam said. “They do what they feel they need to with the tools at hand.” He smiled crookedly. “No email in the afterlife.”
Price laughed and Lacey thought Sam’s joking was more reassurance to the man than anything else.
“So no smudging needed here?” she asked Sam.
He shook his head. “Nope. This is clean. Let’s go on up to that top bedroom and see if this has mitigated her hold there, as well.”
They walked back to the patio, avoiding the deepest ruts left by the trucks. Lacey agreed: a small price to pay for peace of mind.
“I’ll just add the lawn to my to-do list,” Price sighed. “Seems like there’s no end to the projects in an old house like this.”
“Really?” Lacey said. “It looks great. I can’t imagine there’d be much left to do.”
“Oh, there’s always something. We did all the most obvious things first—paint, carpet, kitchen counters. But there’s still a lot of small things to see to.”
Vicky and the girls were waiting expectantly on the patio. Price gave them a big thumbs up, and they all grinned. Tansy applauded.
“All clear,” Price affirmed as they stepped up on the patio. He bent down to address the girls directly. “You can play anywhere in the yard and no one will bother you.”
Melody peeked up at Sam for the expert’s opinion. He nodded. “Your dad’s right. You can play anywhere you want.”
“Thank God,” Vicky breathed. “And you two, of course,” she quickly amended. “So now what?”
“Now,” Sam said, “I need to check that upstairs room. That’s the site of her grief and guilt. That’s where she saw it happen.” He pulled out a smudge stick.
Inside the house, Lacey pulled her phone from her pack.
“Do you need to do this alone?” Price asked.
“No,” Sam said. “You can watch if you want.”
Price and Vicky exchanged looks. “I think the girls and I will stay down here,” she said.
Sam nodded. “Fair enough. This won’t take long.” He swept Lacey and Price with his gaze. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Price said. Lacey held up her phone.
They trooped up the stairs, Sam in the lead. As each of them stepped in turn on the middle step, it creaked loudly.
“Number 101 on my to-do list,” Price said.
At the landing at the top of the stairs, Sam hesitated. Lacey gave him a bit of room and Price stood with her. She turned on the video function of her phone.
The door to the office was closed, and Sam stepped up to it. He held his hand over the knob, not touching it, and stood silently for a moment. Finally he slid his hand around the knob and turned it.
The door swung open.
It was dim inside. The dark sheers at the window were three-quarters drawn, and with the sun gone behind the western horizon, the room was twilight gray. Sam flicked the light switch and the central fixture flashed to life.
He moved inside.
He went directly toward the window as Lacey suspected he would. When he reached the open area there, he held his arms out to his sides, hands open, and stood quietly.
“Jean Hawkes. We know who you are. We know your pain. We know your loss.” He turned slowly as he spoke in a low tone. “The loss of your daughter was devastating, the worst pain a parent can experience. But she’s gone on. The place where she died, as you know, has been rendered safe. No other children will die there. There’s no need for you to stay.” He put a lighter to the smudge stick, turning the bundle so that strands of the aromatic plant material would catch the flame. Smoke began to rise.
Sam blew on the small flame, coaxing it to life. Once the fire caught fully, Sam blew it out, leaving only the burning ember.
“Jean,” he said, raising the bundle. The smoke dipped and whirled. “Lynette is gone. Go with her. The girls here are safe; you don’t have to watch over them anymore. There’s no guilt here. You couldn’t have known about the well. It wasn’t your fault. Go with Lynette. Go on with your journey. Learn, grow, and love again. That is your destiny.” He turned once, slowly, trailing the blue smoke all about the room. As he neared the window again, the slight breeze outside sucked the smoke through the screen. The window, open just a few inches, left a pathway for the cedar-scented smoke.
And Jean?
“Go with God,” Sam intoned.
Lacey moved her camera from Sam’s upturned face to the window where the tatters of smoke scampered outside like children at play.
Go with it, she thought, prayed, enjoined. Go with the smoke. Rise up and go.
Sam exhaled heavily, allowing his shoulders to loosen and relax, his hand with the smudge stick at his side. Finally he turned.
“That’s all we can do,” he said.
Price’s eyes darted about the room. “Is she gone?”
Sam hesitated, and that alone caught Lacey’s attention. “She’s … fighting it. I believe she will go, but it might take a bit before she lets go completely. Come on. Let’s go downstairs.”
They trooped down the stairs, three footfalls on the middle step, three creaks of the old, tired wood. They joined Vicky in the living room. The girls sprawled on the carpet, playing quietly with plastic model horses.
The three settled into seats and Vicky leaned toward them, hopeful. Lacey stashed her phone and pulled out her digital recorder.
Sam faced their clients, and Lacey noticed him rubbing the outside of one thigh with a restless hand.
“As I said, the yard is clear. She’s still clinging upstairs. It may just take her a little more time to loosen her grip. I would expect her to fade over the next couple of days. In any event, she certainly won’t bother anyone.”
“Uh,
all right,” Vicky said tentatively. “Does it usually take them some time to leave?”
Sam chewed on his lower lip. “To be honest, no. Usually they depart as soon as I’m done smudging.” He met their uneasy gazes and exhaled heavily. “We know who she is. We know her story. Usually that’s enough to move them on. I’m not sure why she’s waiting.” He glanced over at Lacey, as surprised as the others, then back at the Reeds. “Give it a day or two. If you’re still feeling a presence, let me know.”
The Reeds both nodded but their uncertainty was obvious. Vicky reached for her purse and pulled out her checkbook.
“Let’s wait on that,” Sam said. “I just want to be sure.”
“I appreciate that,” Price said, “but you did clear the yard. That was the greatest concern.”
“No, we’ll wait.” He stood, and Lacey scrambled to gather her things. “If you feel anything, hear anything, give us a call.”
“Fair enough.” Price shook Sam’s hand. “Thank you. We can sleep easier knowing that well is plugged.”
In the car, Lacey waited until she’d backed out of the driveway and started down the hill before she spoke.
“So what’s going on?” she asked.
Sam crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the window. “I don’t know. This is throwing me. Something’s not right.”
Lacey drove mindfully down the dark, curving street. “Are you sure it’s her?”
“Oh, yes,” he said forcefully. “It’s her. And it’s about her daughter. I know that. But there’s … something else. Something more is going on. I can’t quite… get there.”
Lacey wasn’t sure what to think. She’d never seen Sam unable to clear a ghost, never seen him stymied like this. She wanted to pass it off, fairly sure Jean would move on, but his knotty concern unsettled her.
“Maybe I should call Yvonne again.”
Sam didn’t answer right away, still staring out the window.
“No. We’ll just wait. Give it a day or two.”
Wait. Lacey hated that word.
~~~
FOURTEEN
As soon as Sam left for the studio Thursday morning, Lacey got out her phone and her notebook and started going back over her notes. If they were missing something, it could be here and they just didn’t see it. She watched the first two videos of Sam as he walked, both in the house and in the yard. Grief. Of course, massive grief over the death of her daughter. A mother would have to be made of stone to not grieve her child’s death. Guilt. Again, normal. It was a parent’s first responsibility to keep her child safe. In this case, she hadn’t, but it wasn’t through neglect or malice; it was simply lack of knowledge. Jean didn’t know the well was even there. How could she be expected to keep her daughter safe from a danger she didn’t know about? But to a grieving mother, unable to even hold the body of her dead child at the bottom of the shaft, that was no reprieve.
Lacey huffed out a breath and stared up at the ceiling. Wait. Ha! Easier said than done. She thought again about calling Yvonne but felt sure her call would not be warmly received, if it was received at all. And even if Yvonne relented and answered the call, Lacey doubted she’d have any more insight. Whisked away at the age of five, blamed for her sister’s death—what more could she possibly know about her mother’s state of mind?
Blamed for her sister’s death. That was too terrible a burden for a five-year-old to carry, especially when it was patently untrue. If Jean hadn’t known about the well, how could Yvonne?
Nothing new was coming to her. No ah ha moment fired her mind.
Lacey shoved her phone and notebook away and resolved to do something productive. The open house was tomorrow, but that was all squared away. Instead she turned to her least favorite thing: housework. Case or no case, open house or no open house, there was always dusting or vacuuming or laundry to be done. Why couldn’t Sam banish dust the way he could banish ghosts?
Why couldn’t he banish this one?
Wait.
After two loads of laundry, vacuuming the whole apartment, and doing a rigorous workout in the complex’s exercise room, she fixed herself a quick lunch. Peering into the refrigerator, though, she began to wonder what to fix for dinner. Chicken? Pasta? Salad? Nothing sounded supremely satisfying. She checked her watch—1:30. She’d call Sam and see what sounded good to him.
“Hey,” he said upon answering his phone.
“Hey. What sounds good for dinner? I’ve got—”
“Lacey, Rod’s here.”
Visions of fried chicken evaporated. “Rod? What’s going on? Did they—?”
“I called him,” Sam said. “I’m okay, but … someone shot at me.”
“What?” Lacey leaped to her feet and scanned the room for her pack. She grabbed her car keys. “I’m on my way.”
“Lacey, I’m okay. I’m fine. You don’t have to come down.”
“I’m coming. Did you see who it was? Get a description? Is it Macias?” She slung her pack over one shoulder and charged out the door, pulling it shut behind her.
“No, I couldn’t tell. It was a drive-by. They’re digging a bullet out of my wood pile right now.”
“Okay. I’m on my way. I’ll be there in a few.”
She hung up the phone and jammed it into her pocket as she unlocked her car. Tossing her pack into the passenger seat, she hopped in and fired up the little SUV.
Every red light was an aggravation. She fumed at each additional second she was forced to wait.
She hated that word.
At the studio, she ran her car in behind the squad car at the curb, slammed it into park and jumped out, running. She sprinted down the driveway, past Sam’s truck, and into the back yard.
Sam and Rod were standing beside the fire pit. Dolan was prowling the yard, looking for something. Lacey ran to Sam and hugged him.
“You’re okay? You weren’t hit?”
He held her close. “No. I’m fine. They all missed me.”
“All?” She leaned away so she could stare up into his face. “How many times did they shoot?”
“I heard three shots. They found two bullets; still looking for the third.”
Lacey pulled one arm from around Sam’s waist, but kept hold of his hand with the other. She faced Rod. “Did you talk with DelMonico?”
Rod nodded, his mustache hiding his frown. “Just got the familial DNA results this morning; Reynaldo is Ramon’s brother. No doubt about it.”
She turned her attention back to Sam. “Did you see the vehicle?”
“Just as it sped off. A dark sedan. Not new; kind of ratty-looking. Nothing more specific than that, though.”
“How many in the car?” she asked.
“Just the driver. All I could see for sure was that he wore a baseball cap.”
Lacey chewed on that, but actually thought that was a good thing. She hoped it meant that Macias hadn’t hooked into any LA gang yet, and was still a lone wolf. He might be harder to run down this way, but she thought he could do less damage on his own than part of a group.
She had another thought, and turned back to Rod. “Can you check the businesses here on the block? See if any of them have surveillance cameras?”
“It’s already on my list,” Rod said.
“All right. What about the gun?”
“Nine millimeter. Of course everybody and his brother has a nine millimeter.”
“Yeah.” Lacey’s was back at the apartment. Maybe she should start wearing it. Or let Sam wear it.
A white van pulled up to the curb out front. More detectives, she figured.
She heard the doors open and close, the sliding side door rattle open, then slam shut. Then a woman’s voice.
“This way. Come on.”
“Oh, shit,” Lacey groaned.
Sam and Rod both turned to look.
Marina Vasquez and her cameraman came up the drive.
“What the—?” Rod’s voice was sharp with annoyance.
“Lacey! Sam!” Marina
waved. “We heard it on the police scanner. You okay?”
“We’re fine,” Lacey said, biting her tongue.
“Hey.” Rod stepped forward and blocked the news crew’s advance into the yard. “This is an active investigation here. You can’t come in.”
“Oh.” Marina pouted prettily, her eyes scanning the yard to see what Dolan was doing. “Can you give us a statement?” She smiled at Rod.
“No.” The seasoned detective crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. Then he noticed that Herb was filming, his eye to the eyepiece of the camera on his shoulder. “Turn that off, please.” When neither Herb nor Marina responded, Rod covered the camera lens with his hand. “Off.”
Marina hesitated a few seconds, then shrugged. “Turn it off, Herb.”
The cameraman switched off the camera and pulled it off his shoulder.
“So, Lacey, Sam, can you tell us what happened?” The reporter, completely unfazed by Rod’s shutdown, turned her attention to the couple.
“Come on, Marina,” Lacey scoffed. “Give it a rest. Let the cops do their job.”
“Are you still going to have your open house if someone is taking pot shots at you?”
“Yes,” Sam said. His voice was brittle.
Marina’s eyes brightened. “Oh? Great, good for you. Who knows? Maybe we’ll stop by.”
“It’s open to the public,” Lacey said, working hard to keep her voice even.
“That’s right; it is, isn’t it?” Marina smiled. She looked from Lacey to Sam, then to the glowering detective, then scanned the yard one more time. “Well, we’ll leave you to it. See ya.”
Lacey was patently surprised the reporter was backing off without a fight. The reason became clear when the news team moved just beyond the driveway and stopped on the edge of the property next door. Herb brought his camera back up to his shoulder, and Marina stood facing him, her microphone at her mouth. Lacey couldn’t hear what she was saying, but turned her back to the impromptu setup.
“All right,” she said to Rod. “What else do we need here?”
“I think we’re done. Dolan’s not having any luck finding that third bullet, so it must have gone wide. We’ll run ballistics on the two we have, see if they match anything else in the database.”
Revenge Walk Page 8
